Wodonga-based Virginia Mansel-Lees is president of the La Trobe branch of the National Tertiary Education Union. She says when it comes to attracting students to universities, students need to know how they will benefit from studying at a specific campus.

It follows the University's proposal to significantly cut its humanities and social sciences faculty to reduce the University's $4 million debt. The proposed cuts could see 45 staff lose their jobs and humanities courses slashed due to dwindling enrolments.

Mansel-Lees says a long term approach could help keep finances in check.

"How you get to that has to be prefaced by what you are offering and why... What makes doing a Bachelor of Arts at La Trobe different to doing a Bachelor of Arts somewhere else?

"I don't think that the (Humanities and Social Science) courses are not relevant. We have waves of what is popular and what is not popular... I think what happens locally is that when you repeat what you are doing from a main campus then that marketing remains (for the regional-based campuses).

"What we are trying to say to people who live locally is 'You can do your course here and this is what is on offer for you'... Perhaps that message is not done in a way that is localised enough.

"Students are very savvy in what they want to do, they have an idea, they want to follow that through and they will go where they can to follow that through. When you are on a smaller campus one of the things that students are looking for is being able to relate to the lecturers and each other and the community they live and work in..."

La Trobe University Executive Dean, Professor Tim Murray was recently in the Goulburn Murray region to update staff and students on possible cuts.

He says the University's, proposed restructure, is for the public comment as well as students and teachers.

"Rest assured the document we have released is going to be very different when we finish the process."

The public consultation process finishes on July 30th.

"We will have about a week or so to finalise our response to that, we will release that back to staff and students for another round of consultations and then around the end of August we will start to implement."

The University says they will honour obligations to existing students. "What happens in respect in 2013 for new students enrolling will depend on the result we get from the organisational change."